Women’s NCAA Tournament Bracket Revealed

Bowling Green is the #12 seed in the Kansas City Regional and will play #5 Michigan St at Louisville Saturday at 12:11pm. Its frankly as favorable a draw as Curt Miller’s team could have hoped for. I think a #12 seed is fair and slightly better than the #13 I was expecting. The Spartans are obviously a solid opponent but the Lady Falcons got a neutral site pod as opposed to playing someone in a road game. Its also a site within a reasonable distance of Bowling Green so hopefully some orange clad fans can make the trip. Should they make a run the 2nd round opponent would likely be Kentucky (or Liberty) and the #1 seed in this Region is Nebraska, which based on the name on the front of the uniform is the least scary #1 (UConn, Stanford, and Tennessee being the others).

In terms of geography it would have been sweet to get the Dayton Regional, which is what #2 seed Ohio St did get. They will play Sunday at 12:11pm against St. Francis (PA) in Pittsburgh at the Pedersen Events Center. They would be looking at either Mississippi St or Middle Tennessee in the 2nd round on Tuesday. Of course, the drawback to this assignment is that Dayton is the Northeastern-most Regional site, so its the one the Lady Huskies of Connecticut were sent to. Getting to the Elite 8 and shocking UConn would be karmic retribution for all those early exits for the Buckeyes in the Jim Foster era. But I’m not holding my breath and will settle for making the Elite 8.

Looking at the big picture Tennessee is the “worst” #1 seed which means the Auriemma v Summit showdown would be in a National Semifinal. That might surprise some but looking at the resumes of Stanford and Nebraska its hard to argue with ranking them higher. Duke is the #2 in the Vols Memphis Regional, Nebraska has Notre Dame as the #2 in Kansas City, and Stanford has Texas A&M as the #2 in Sacramento.

I really wish the Women’s tournament would either go back to having pod seeds all play at home or go to a men’s like format of everyone being on neutral floors. They did go back to only having one pod in 16 sites rather than 2 pods in 8 sites and a lot of them are either neutral (host school didn’t make the Tourney) or highest seed is at home. The one exception I see at a quick glance is #9 James Madison being in Norfolk, VA. They will play Temple in the 1st round and then potentially UConn in the 2nd round. I find that a bit untidy, but it is what it is. At any rate, let the games begin!